June 7, 2016, 4:08 pm
For those who used Final Cut Pro Studio before 2011, a very popular feature request for Final Cut Pro X is the ability to send clips to Apple Motion. Motion can be used for the kind of more advanced motion graphics tasks. Post production file format translation supremo Wes Plate has made Automatic Duck Xsend Motion.
Iain Anderson’s review at Mac Pro Video:

Despite the excellent integration between FCP X and Motion, this critical piece has always been missing and often been requested. F...

Share this posting

May 18, 2018, 1:27 pm
If you have lots of video to transcode and tight deadlines, sometimes even Apple Compressor isn’t fast enough for the job. If you have a Mac with multiple cores and lots of RAM or a network of Macs going to spare, you can use this power to speed up video conversions and transcodes.
Using more cores on your Mac
If you have many CPU cores and enough RAM, you can have multiple copies (‘instances’) of Compressor run on your iMac or Mac Pro at the same time. Each copy works on a different...

Share this posting

May 18, 2018, 9:14 am
If you have lots of video to transcode and tight deadlines, sometimes even Apple Compressor isn’t fast enough for the job. If you have a Mac with multiple cores and lots of RAM or a network of Macs going to spare, you can use this power to speed up video conversions and transcodes.
Using more cores on your Mac
If you have many CPU cores and enough RAM, you can have multiple copies (‘instances’) of Compressor run on your iMac or Mac Pro at the same time. Each copy works on a different...

Share this posting

May 14, 2018, 6:53 am
More from Apple’s job site. This time signs that they are looking to develop features for their applications, OSes and hardware to support spatial audio. Spatial audio allows creators to define soundscapes in terms of the relative position of sound sources to listeners. This means that if I hear someone start talking to my left, if I turn towards them, the sound should seem to come from what I'm looking at - from the front. Useful for 360° spherical audio, fully-interactive VR and experi...

Share this posting

April 28, 2018, 5:06 pm
A good way of seeing what Apple plans to work on is to check out their jobs site. A July 2017 job posting for a pro workflow expert to set up a studio ends up with Apple giving a journalist a tour of the lab in April 2018.
Here is a round-up of recent Apple Pro Apps-related job posts. They hint as to what might be appearing in Apple’s video applications in 2019.
Many start with this description of the Apple Video Applications group:
The Video Applications group develops leading...

Share this posting

April 9, 2018, 11:47 am
Last Thursday Apple announced that Final Cut Pro 10.4.1 would be available today. As the launch of a relatively big update requires changes to a good number of pages on apple.com, some information is coming out before the update is available.
The specification page for Final Cut Pro, Motion and Compressor have already been updated to state that the minimum requirements have changed from macOS Sierra 10.12.6 to macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 or later.
It is rare that Final Cut Pro needs such a ...

Share this posting

April 7, 2018, 5:59 am
REDSHARK have captured an exclusive video with Jeremy Young, the CEO of Atomos to get their take on ProRes RAW. Thanks to Charles Wren for the link.
Here are a few excerpts from the 17 minute interview.
He said that Atomos supporting ProRes RAW is the culmination of years of work. Atomos aim to supply 80% of the market – ARRI have the top-end cinema workflow sorted. They see it as their task to take best of that workflow and make it for everyone else.
Although Atomos could captu...

Share this posting

April 5, 2018, 9:25 am
Apple have announced the next version of Final Cut Pro X will have two features for high-end workflows. The free update will include ProRes RAW for better footage acquisition and flexible closed captioning for media distribution. It will be available from Monday April 9th from the Mac App Store.
ProRes RAW - for Final Cut Pro 10.4.1 only
ProRes RAW provides the real-time performance and storage convenience of ProRes 442HQ and 4444 with the postproduction flexibility of camera RAW.
Wher...

Share this posting

March 27, 2018, 12:19 pm
Since May 2017, Apple has been running its ‘Everyone Can Code’ educational programme. It provides video-based and interactive book-based coursework teachers and trainers to help people learn how to make applications in Apple’s Swift programming language. Schools and universities operate Apple-supported courses in app development.
Although it is great that more people can learn software development this way, I think that the ability to know how to tell stories is a skill that a w...

Share this posting

March 26, 2018, 11:50 am
The reason why some editors don't like Final Cut Pro X is because other film makers such as directors can pick it up so quickly. Here is a (Google-translated) quote from an article on finalcutpro.es about the editing of award-winning Spanish feature film ‘Handia’:
I think there is a fear on the part of some editors to be dispossessed of their tool. A Moviola, an Avid or even Premiere requires prior knowledge. With FCPX, everything is facilitated, I would say, simplified and the edito...

Share this posting

January 24, 2018, 6:33 am
Facebook’s Oculus division have defined a new unit of time says BBC News:
The flick has been designed to help developers keep video effects in sync, according to a description on the code-sharing site GitHub.
A flick, derived from "frame-tick", is 1/705,600,000 of a second - the next unit of time after a nanosecond.
A researcher at Oxford University said the flick wouldn't have much general impact but may help create better virtual reality experiences.
Although most people are n...